Name: F233

Sex: Female

Age: Born 2010

We’ve observed F233 more than 330 times since her birth in May 2010. She gave birth to her own first calf in 2019. We had just one sighting of F233 and that calf before the calf disappeared. The next time we saw F233, she had fresh shark bites and no calf. On July 11, 2021, we observed F233 with a brand new calf — the 15th calf recorded in 2021! We estimate that the calf was just days old in the picture below because of the visible fetal folds and the hairs still present on its rostrum. Both F233’s new calf — F2332 — and her previous calf are the first documented sixth-generation calves in the Sarasota Bay dolphin community.

Check out the chart below to learn more about this maternal lineage that we have documented through its most recent — sixth — generation!

A Special Note About the Audio Recording

In collaboration with numerous colleagues over the past 35 years, our dolphin communication research team has collected thousands of hours of acoustic recordings from members of the resident Sarasota bottlenose dolphin community, with a focus on individually distinctive signature whistles. Recordings have been made during periodic health assessments, when we are able to obtain high-quality recordings of known individual dolphins. We are currently in the process of systematically assembling a verified signature whistle catalog, with multiple samples from each of the approximately 1,000 unique recording sessions of almost 300 individual dolphins. Members of this collaborative team, and our student researchers, come from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, University of St. Andrews, and Hampshire College. Learn more about dolphin communication.

In this image, F233 swims with her calf, 2332 on July 11, 2021. We estimate that the calf was just days old in this image.